Charakterization of Thiobacillus isolates from a Uranium mining waste pile

In the natural bioleaching systems autochtonic microorganisms are involved in the solubilization of metals from solid minerals. The widest spreaded mesophilic group of bioleaching microorganisms are the chemolithoautotrophic bacteria Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, Thiobacillus thiooxidans, and Leptospirillum ferrooxidans.
From soil samples drawn from two particular sites of a former uranium mine in Saxony, Germany, which were polluted in different extend with heavy metals, several Thiobacillus strains were cultured. Using ARDREA the strains were classified in two uranium-waste-site-specific 16S rDNA subgroups of the species Thiobacillus ferrooxidans. Moreover, RAPD and PFGE analyses have demonstrated that the natural T. ferrooxidans isolates possess also group-specific genomic organization. The strains from the more polluted sample were tolerant to higher concentrations of uranyl ions which were lethal for the isolates of the second group. In these strains the expression of at least three genes was influenced by the presence of uranyl ions. The uranium binding capability of the uranium mine isolates was strain-specific and higher than those of the reference T. ferrooxidans strains recovered from other environments.